Get Out of Teaching Podcast Season 4, Episode 1, Hunter Leonard (Mature-aged Business success coach)

Hunter Leonard is a business owner, author and speaker who has developed a reputation for outstanding marketing and strategic growth through his first business - Blue Frog  Marketing.

Hunter founded Silver & Wise in 2016 with the aim of combating ageism and discrimination. He is  achieving this through positive and practical solutions helping mature individuals with smart  business ownership training and work transition programs. His aim is to change the world one  mature age individual at a time.

 He is highly regarded for his warmth, generosity, innovative thinking and his ability to get  measurable results for his clients.

 Hunter has just launched a follow-up book to Generation Experience, called The Experience  Equation which immediately went to #1 on the Hot New Releases on AMAZON. He has  developed partnerships with some of Australia’s largest corporations and is on track to create  billions of dollars of economic benefit for the Australian economy through these partnerships.

 When not running his business, Hunter is a keen bushwalker, musician, photographer and cook.

Website: www.silverandwise.com.au
Linnkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunter-leonard/
Email: hunter@silverandwise.com.au

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Chris Carlin's Links
Website: https://masteryourmoneynow.com.au/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/masteryourmoneynow
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/masteryourmoneynow
IG: https://www.instagram.com/masteryourmoneynow/

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Aired on July 21st 2021
 
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Transcript

Elizabeth Diacos  0:00  
Welcome to Season 4 of the Get Out of Teaching Podcast presented by Larksong Enterprises. I'm your host, Elizabeth Diacos. I'm a career transition coach who guides overwhelmed teachers through a 5-step process out of Education and into a life they love. In this season, we'll be meeting experts from many different sectors who help people to change careers, as well as a few ex-teachers who've forged a pathway into something new. I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that what keeps people in teaching when they'd rather leave is often financial pressure. That's why today's show is sponsored by Chris Carlin, Financial Planner and Mortgage Broker from Master Your Money Now. 

Chris can help you sort out your cash flow, pay down debt, and plan your financially strategic exit from teaching, making sure you take good care of everything you've worked so hard for. Chris understands personal insurance cover, and can help you to make a successful claim. So you don't have to deal with the insurance company yourself. A huge relief if you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed by money concerns. Chris is not about taking risks. He's careful to help you keep your money safe. And his fees are very reasonable. He can even help you plan for retirement. Chris cares for the caring professions, teachers and nurses, helping you to shore up your financial resources so that you'll be in a good position to leave when you're ready. Go to masteryourmoneynow.com.au to book a free 30-minute chat with Chris Carlin, and master your money now. 

Episode 1. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the show. And on today's show. I'm very pleased to be interviewing Hunter Leonard from Silver and Wise. Welcome to the show, Hunter.

Hunter Leonard  1:51  
Hey, Elizabeth, nice to see you.

Elizabeth Diacos  1:53  
So Hunter, you help people to set up a business and you do business coaching. And you help mature people who want to start a business or plan their, their future of their work? How and why do you do that? Tell us about a bit more about that.

Hunter Leonard  2:11  
Yeah, well look, it started out when I was I was actually on a bit of a journey to expand my consulting business and, and I found out some some statistics on ageism. And it really inspired me to take what we know and sort of turn it into another business in a mission to help mature aged people who are facing that particular -ism. There's plenty of -isms. Ageism is probably the biggest topic because it affects all of us at one stage or another. And so yeah, I particularly I had a lot of experience working with business owners. And we've done a lot of surveys and a lot of work on developing business strategy and marketing strategy for those clients. 

And so I decided to turn that into a new business to help mature aged people who wanted to start their own business, because quite a few do once they kind of get into that issue of suffering from ageism or experiencing it, and they can't get another job or it takes a long time to get another job, or maybe they're just sick of their job. But it's it's another adventure that they can go on. And quite a, quite a large percentage of people in their 40s, 50s and 60s are actually now thinking about having their own gig and doing their own thing. So..

Elizabeth Diacos  3:20  
Yeah, yeah, so a lot of the clients I work with, are finding that they're unable to get another job or even an interview. Because as soon as, even if they don't put their age on the, you know, their resume, you can tell by when they started studying, you know, that any number that started with like the, you know, 1980s or something, they're like, "Oh, well, it's a pretty clear picture." And so then it makes it really difficult for them to to sometimes get another job, or people say like, "You're not going to be in it for the long haul," or "You're not going to be able to bring value if we bring you into our organization." And so then they kind of go "Okay, well then if that's not gonna work, what's next?" 

Or they might just hate having a boss. I mean, I've talked to so many teachers who have no agency in their career. So they, they're assigned to year level they don't want to teach or a time fraction they don't want to work, you know, under and they realize, you know, they've actually got no say at all in how their career plays out. And so then they think, "Okay, well, how can I take control again?" All right, so you've, you've written a few books, and actually, oh, I did have them here. I think I've moved them, but do you want to tell us about your books and, and the process of writing a book? Because I think people will really be interested in that too...

Hunter Leonard  4:49  
Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. Look, I I guess, back in 2009, when I wrote my first book, I was kind of a reluctant author, to be honest. I had a client of mine, I was doing a series of seminars with him. And we were traveling around the country doing these seminars for business owners. And at the time, about halfway through this, I think, was 17 seminars that we did in a couple of weeks. So it was a bit of a roadshow.

Elizabeth Diacos  5:14  
Wow.

Hunter Leonard  5:15  
He kept saying to me, "I really think you could put your presentation into a book?" And I was going "Ah, maybe, I don't want to put it in a book, that'd, y'know... I'm not really a writer." And anyway, he mentioned that a few more times. And I started thinking about the idea. "Well, actually, you know what I might, I wouldn't mind giving that a crack." And just as I started thinking about that, he said, "Look, if you write the book, I'll, I'll put a testimonial on it for you. And he was the leader of a fairly, one of the largest banks in Australia," so it was, it was pretty cool to have somebody of that ilk say that they would write a testimonial for me based on, based on the content. 

So that was the first book, which was a marketing. But more recently, I've written a couple of books on this whole idea of ageism, and the and the paths that mature age people can take as a result of it because it does exist. So the first thing I'd say to your listeners is, they're not alone. There's a lot of people that experience this issue in their 40s and 50s. and beyond. For women, it's actually earlier because they get the double whammy of sexism and ageism. So those two, those two intertwine. And basically, I write books, because I want to share my experience, my tips, the tools that we use with other people in a form that is, you know, inexpensive for them to access. So I don't write books to hide half the secret. If you know what I mean, so I don't give away half of it in the book and expect people to then come and have me as a coach to get the rest of it, I really just share a whole lot. And then if somebody is a self starter, they can then read the book, and they can just go for it, using the tools and experience that we've had.

Elizabeth Diacos  6:52  
Yeah, so I was listening to your second book as an audiobook while I was out walking, which was awesome. That that made it you know, really accessible, I didn't even need to stop doing what I was doing. I could actually, you know, listen to it while I was walking along. So, and your, I understand you've just recorded the audio for the your first book so that you could make an audio book as well. I think when we spoke...

Hunter Leonard  7:19  
Yes I have, yeah, yeah. And that'll be the process from now on is to make have both formats available, because it's just that a lot of people do like, like, you like to just listen to the book rather than read it, which is, which is fine. So I'm more than happy to make it accessible in whatever format is available.

Elizabeth Diacos  7:36  
So, so tell us about both books, like the content a little bit like a brief, not the whole book, obviously. But just like a little brief overview of each book. 

Hunter Leonard  7:47  
Yeah, I can start reading now and 2 and, uh, half hours later? I'm just joking. 

Elizabeth Diacos  8:01  
16 hours long or something? 

Hunter Leonard  7:55  
That's the longest podcast in history. Well, the first book I wrote was based on all of our research we've done. So we've surveyed 10,000 business over the last decade or so. And we found that there was 18 things that they ran into as a challenge in running a business. So the things that cause the most concern and the things they had to work on in order to be successful in business. So I turned that into the first book, which was for any mature aged person who wanted to start their own business and needed to understand how to be a business owner, because many of these people have been employees all their life. And so they don't really have the skills of running a business, which is a much broader set of skills. It doesn't have to be complicated, but it's a it's a broader set of skills than than most people might might have.

Elizabeth Diacos  8:41  
And what's the title of that first book? Title of the first book? 

Hunter Leonard  8:45  
It's called Generation Experience. Yeah. 

Elizabeth Diacos  8:47  
Generation Experience? Yeah.

Hunter Leonard  8:50  
Yeah. So that's the theme of this idea that this generation has a lot of experience and wisdom.

Elizabeth Diacos  8:55  
Mmm.

Hunter Leonard  8:55  
To share through the running of the business. The second book is called The Experience Equation and that's more for people who might not have really decided that they wanted to start a business yet. So they're still thinking about what's their future plan. And it's really a process again, I base all on my books on really deep research. So I interviewed 300 mature aged people. And from those interviews, I found that there was some gaps in the way people plan their future. So I wrote the book just around helping them to give them a methodology on how they can plan their future. In other words, just creating a personal plan for themselves based on their skills and their, their value their passions and the things they want to achieve in life.

Elizabeth Diacos  9:33  
Yeah. And I think that's so valuable, because often we kind of get on the treadmill. And I was talking to a teacher just before we got on this call. She was on a triage call with me. And I said to her, you know, "You get on the treadmill and then either you've sort of fall off at the end, you know, when you're about to retire, or worse, you wake up one morning and just think I just can't do this anymore. And there's no plan in place and there's no sort of restriction about what what is it going to look like for me to stop doing what I'm doing and do something different." And that they don't even know where to begin the process. So I think it's great that you've, you know, created something that is a bit of a guidepost to how to do that. So...

Hunter Leonard  10:17  
Oh, thank you, yeah. And look, there's a lot, there's a lot of things going on, you know, at the moment in, in the world. Work is changing, the pandemic has changed it again. And so it does help an individual plan in order to make sure you can secure your future for sure, yeah.

Elizabeth Diacos  10:32  
Yeah. So, um, as far as ageism goes, that's something that I think people are encountering in the workplace, but they're not necessarily noticing it, or they don't realize that's what's actually happening. Or they'll go to a job interview, and they, they don't get the job. And they think it's because I wasn't the best candidate or because I was too experienced or not experienced enough, or whatever the reason. And they might not realize that there's an age factor happening there. How do you actually recognize that?

Hunter Leonard  11:09  
Well, it can actually be quite difficult to recognize it because the companies, the companies, where ageism, is being perpetuated if you like, and it does exist, the first thing I'll say is it does exist, it's been proven by the Human Rights Commission, and also the Australian Human Resources Institute in the research that we've done. But it is illegal. So you're not allowed to be ageist in recruiting. So those companies that wish to only employ younger people have become very good at hiding that behavior. And they'll use code, code words might be, you know, "You're overqualified." Or "Do you feel like you've got enough energy for this job?", or "We needed somebody with a bit more enthusiasm" or some are, there's a, there's a whole bunch of things that people report hearing. And why they can't necessarily then take that company to task on the basis of it is certainly, certainly an issue. 

And, look, it's something we have to we have to fix because we live in an aging population. So it means that there are going to be more mature aged people working in the future, doesn't matter -

Elizabeth Diacos  12:21  
Yup.

Hunter Leonard  12:21  
- whether we like that or not, it's irrespective of the fact that most of our population is going to be more mature. And therefore, we're going to have a workforce which is skewed more toward an older age. So we're going to we're going to do as organizations have to get used to that back and have to knock off this stereotyping of mature people, which happens to say, they're not technologically savvy, or they don't have enough energy, or they don't have enough of them, or they're going to be more expensive, or whatever other words they're using to sort of give themselves a reason for not choosing someone based on their best fit for the job.

Elizabeth Diacos  12:56  
Yeah. And I find that that's so fascinating, like, the idea that they would say that they're not enthusiastic enough, like, what does that even mean? Like, that's just you could be not enthusiastic and be 25. Yeah, okay.

Hunter Leonard  13:14  
And it's not that they're saying that they're not enthusiastic. It's more that they're saying. "You're too old for the job, but we don't want to say that."

Elizabeth Diacos  13:23  
Yeah, yeah, of course, they're not going to admit it. But I just, it's such a weak excuse. Okay. All right, sorry. So then, given that there is an aging population, and they're facing this, this difficulty, what what should people take into account if they want to set up their own business, so they don't have to worry about all that other stuff anymore?

Hunter Leonard  13:57  
Look, the main, the main thing I'd say from an individual perspective is the individual themselves has to understand their value. And they have to realize that they actually do have some value and experience and most people they've worked for 20 odd years, have got some experience and wisdom in something. So don't believe the guff going out there that they don't have wisdom and start with that idea that you have a set of skills that you can actually apply to the workforce. And whether it's being an employee or whether it's starting your own business, you can use that experience in business to create the future. 

It may mean that there are certain things you might need to know so if you're gonna start a business and never run a business before, like, I might need some skills in running a business. That's okay. But don't buy into the fact that somebody says "Well, you're gonna need to go and retrain yourself in you know, digital marketing or, or, or coding websites or, or IT skills" because you know, really, there's plenty of people who can do IT. In a business, we can have an IT person and we might just need to know how to use a specific program that we're entering our data into. Maybe you have to learn that, that's fine. 

But I, I think this stereotyping of saying that people in their 40s and 50s are not technologically savvy is kind of crap anyway, because most of us have mobile phones, and we use 20 odd apps on our phones to do all the things we need in life anyway. So I don't feel that the workforce is any more difficult than that in terms of using maybe a customer relationship management system or a database program or HR system or an Education system. They're all relatively easy to use. And I think we cannot be out just because they're 50 and say, they don't know anything about technology.

Elizabeth Diacos  15:42  
Yeah, that's right. And and you know, we've had to adjust. Yeah,

Hunter Leonard  15:48  
Yeah. So it's a case of assessing your own skills and saying, "I can", who values that, and "How can I put myself in the best place to be able to exchange that value with someone," whether it's as an employee or whether it's running your own business, it's all about this idea of exchanging what you have as a skill for some remuneration of some sort?

Elizabeth Diacos  16:07  
Yeah. So if someone did decide to set up their own business, what would be like, if they were going to do like freelancing, or project work or something like that? What should they? What would be the first, say three steps in a nutshell? I know that's a huge question, sorry.

Hunter Leonard  16:25  
Yeah, no, no, it is a big question. But there is there is some some relatively simple and straightforward steps that you need to invest some time in. The first one is really mapping out what you're good at, and what you love doing. So your skills and your passions. Step number one, step number two is finding the marketplace for that. So it might be that that's online in one of these freelance sites that exist. So there's Experts 360, there's Upwork, there's Fiverr, there's a few other places where somebody wants to freelance their skills can can go to.

Elizabeth Diacos  16:59  
Yeah, they're not very well, sorry they're not very well paid gigs, usually though, is that is that fair to say?

Hunter Leonard  17:07  
It's probably fair to say on Fiverr and Upwork, that they're probably skewed to overseas labor, which is a lot lower, but Expert 360 can be, Expert 360 is quite good and they can be quite, you know, good hourly rates and good projects that can be picked up on the person's skill set. But aside from the freelance sites, if you're like, really setting up a freelancer or a contracting business, it's more about thinking, "Well, who are my customers that I can reach whether I can reach them physically (putting aside lockdown issues), if I can reach them physically, in my local area, or in my local region? How would I do that?"

And being a freelancer is a bit like running your own business anyway, it's about finding customers, and surveying them as to what they might need and want. You know, most of your, your clients are teachers. So teachers have these fantastic skills in being able to help somebody understand the topic, it really probably doesn't really matter what topic it is, they have this skill of being able to put together a lesson plan and take somebody from not knowing anything about it, to being able to know something about it. 

Elizabeth Diacos  18:18  
Yeah.

Hunter Leonard  18:18  
That's a broader skill that can go beyond teaching children. It can be about teaching adults, it can be about teaching people in a workplace, about putting together courses for somebody in a workplace to teach their staff how to do something. So it's some, it's thinking about the broader application of what you know, and do beyond what you've done in the past. And it's the same for marketing people. It's the same for accountants, it's the same for any number of professions or people who've done things in the past as an employee, there are ways to find somebody who needs what you need, in a freelance sense, as well, or on a project basis for sure.

Elizabeth Diacos  18:55  
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, so finding out who you're going to serve is always the issue, isn't it? Because everything we do is solving a problem for somebody. So..

Hunter Leonard  19:07  
That's right.

Elizabeth Diacos  19:07  
You know, I help teachers work out what what they're going to do next. And so solving the problem of having either not enough options or feeling like you have none, or having so many that you can't decide between them. And so that's often that creative process is around that. What else do you need to do if you're going to - so if you're a freelancer, you still have to, you're like a consultant, you still have to have like a, you have to set up a business. You can't just rock up but you have to have a here in Australia, you need an ABN or you know, you need to be able to do business so and take money, be able to take payment. 

So you've got to link your bank account and all those things. Is that what they need to worry about next? Is that the next step about take how do you how do you get money like how do you actually physically make get people to make a payment to you like what should they be worried about second?

Hunter Leonard  20:00  
Yeah, I wouldn't worry about any of that until you work out whether there's a market for it. So you've got your idea of what your skills and your passion are, and you've got a sense of who might be the customer. The third thing I do then is really is talking to enough of those customers to see that what you've got is old value to them, and to find out what that value might be.

Elizabeth Diacos  20:19  
Right. 

Hunter Leonard  20:19  
So the stuff of setting up an ABN and a bank account, that's all, you know, it's small, small importance compared to understanding if there's actually a market for what you're going to do. And look, people might think that it's, you try it, "Okay, I go for the magic bullet, I'll try and find just someone to give me the work." That's not the way being a freelancer is going to be in the future, it's really about you creating your own market, understanding your customers. And if you're willing to put in some effort here, then you can actually come to a point where you can have good financial security, because you've created this idea of a market between you and a set of customers, you've found out the values you and then you can continue to expand the number of people that are like that those people that you surveyed, if you like, so.

Elizabeth Diacos  21:07  
Yeah.

Hunter Leonard  21:08  
And it's one of the missing ingredients. For many small businesses, when they first started, they don't survey enough customers to understand there's some value for what they're trying to do, and that it's actually realistically going to give them the money that they need to earn. 

Elizabeth Diacos  21:08  
Yeah, yeah.

Hunter Leonard  21:09  
As a business owner, to fund their life, if you like. But I, in my view, if a mature aged person is sending out hundreds of resumes to try and get a job, that's a lot of effort. So maybe just redirect some of that effort to understanding what other alternative markets you can have. It's not that much more effort. If you're not, I mean, that it's effort that's going to lead to being much more in control of your future.

Elizabeth Diacos  21:46  
Yeah, that is such a great point. Like you, I know, my first, my very first job application took me 16 hours to write. By the by the time I left, fully left, that it was about a 45 minute max, including the cover letter, because I had so many options to choose from that I'd written, that I could just cut and paste pretty much. And then, you know, tailor it to the to the job. But it was still, you know, I was sending out applications regularly to all kinds of trying to go to a different school, and then also trying to get a job in in completely different organization. Some of those jobs were training jobs, and just for the Australian audience, they often wanted me to have the certificate, following workplace training and assessment. 

Even if, even though I was teacher, they didn't care about that based on wanting me to have the search for. And so my advice would be if someone is a, if they're trying to get a job as a trainer, and they want to work in that space, just bite the bullet, spend $2,000, go and do the eight day course and get it out of the way. Because it was a it was actually a big stumbling block for me to get a job in TAFE, or any, any of the any of the training sector positions, including the nonprofit sector. So I ended up working with a refugee service. That's how I ended up getting out. But initially, I was applying for these jobs that I just couldn't get that was the one hurdle that I at least at the time felt was an issue that was stopping me from getting even just even getting a look in, you know, after I sort of beyond the interview, they would say, "Oh, but you don't have you haven't done this." And I'm like, "I'm a teacher", and they're like, "Well we don't care." So yeah, I think it's a small price to pay to make yourself much more widely sort of desirable, I think, if I was gonna do it all again, I'd to do that.

Hunter Leonard  23:51  
Yeah. Sure. And look, what is the point you you made there also is this idea that you, particularly as a freelancer or business owner, you're also investing in yourself. So don't forget that idea that if you're the person that's driving most of the revenue, then whatever skills and other abilities and things you can offer, as the business owner, are very valuable investments for yourself. So yes, it's an eight week thing or $2,000 investment, but maybe that then been generates $100,000 worth of income once you speak to some customers who say "Hey, yes, we'd love you to help us train, have you got a Cert IV?" "Yes, I have." "Fantastic, we will engage you to do this program for us."

Elizabeth Diacos  24:30  
Yeah, yeah. 

Hunter Leonard  24:31  
But it really is a case of this idea of researching and thinking and sort of being a bit broader thinking about what you do now and what, like, don't let people tell you what you don't know, focus on what you do know annd what you came to, is a really important thing, I think.

Elizabeth Diacos  24:45  
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's great advice. Okay. So if, if someone wanted to work with you, what would that look like?

Hunter Leonard  24:58  
Well, the first thing, I created books and I'm creating courses. And I also coach people. But the first way people can access the books and they can read, read them. And they can also do small courses that we've created as well. But we also coach people. And we we try and make that accessible. In other words, we have small coaching sessions that we can do for people. And we have ongoing, it depends on what people need. But what I try and do is to try and make our knowledge accessible in the books and in our courses to somebody can access it for a reasonable cost, but if they want more help, then they can access myself or one of my advisors or coaches. 

So I've, as part of my businesses, I'm trying to teach people how to be mature age business coaches, so I've taken people that have come out of business or running businesses. And I'm teaching them how to actually advise other people how to run businesses, and they're all mature aged people as well. So I'm trying to create my own group of mature aged people helping mature aged people, if you like, so. 

Elizabeth Diacos  25:59  
Yeah, yeah. 

Hunter Leonard  26:00  
Part of our approach to it as well. And I also run webinars and do workshops and speak at various conferences and other things as well, just to sort of get this message out. But mature aged people do have value, their experience and wisdom has something that can be exchanged for good financial security. And that there's three ways of doing it, whether it's as an employee or business owner or freelancer, there's multiple options. The one thing we don't want is any of these really smart, experienced engaged people that are sitting on the sidelines doing nothing, because it's not good for them. And it's not good for the broader economy, either.

Elizabeth Diacos  26:36  
Yeah. And I mean, I think what one thing the pandemic has taught us, is that there's, there's still money out there, like, even if it comes from your government, who's you know, propping up the economy for a brief period, there's money, it's somewhere, you know, so it's just tapping into the market that is going to appreciate and value what you bring to the table. I think that's, you know, that's really, really important to shine a light on that, that that's the key to becoming, becoming someone who is going to be able to sustain their work. So what what does the day look like for you? And so what, what do you, what's a, what's a day in the life of Hunter Leonard?

Hunter Leonard  27:21  
A typical day. Well, it consists of three things, mainly, one is servicing my clients. So I have a couple of businesses. So I'm always working with business owners on either their marketing strategy or their business strategy. And if I'm not servicing a client, I'm doing the other parts of running my business, you know, the administration, the strategic planning, the other elements that we coach others into. So I use my own coaching methodology to run my own business, just as an aside, and if I'm not doing that I'm writing. So I'm writing my next couple of books at the moment. So they, they're important.

Elizabeth Diacos  27:57  
You're writing two more books at the moment.

Hunter Leonard  28:01  
Two more books at the moment, yes. So that's number 8 and 9. 

Elizabeth Diacos  28:05  
Oh, wow, and what are they about?

Hunter Leonard  28:07  
Little bit more tougher. One of them is is about the mature age economy. And it's a bit of a broader book on how governments and organizations can support a more mature workforce. So there's a little bit of advice for individuals in there. But it's more about talking about what governments and organizations can do. And the other one's a strategy book. And so trying to make this idea of strategic planning or strategy accessible to people, because a lot of people see it sort of as out of reach, or complex or a little bit too theoretical or esoteric, if you like, if you read a lot of the strategy books, they're written by university professors, and they're more written for theory than they are for practice. So I'm writing a book on how I use various strategic tools in my business on a day to day basis. I'm trying to write it in plain English, so it's accessible.

Elizabeth Diacos  28:56  
Oh, that sounds fantastic. I think I might be your first customer for that one. All right. That sounds and do you like, do you have any hobbies? Do you, I know, you're in lockdown now, but like normally, what would you do you for fun?

Hunter Leonard  29:15  
Yeah, well, so for exercise I love bushwalking. So you know, I'm in Sydney. So we have beautiful bush land all the way around, near where we live, which is fantastic. I play the guitar and perform a bit with music and I like cooking and photography. So I've got plenty of things to keep you busy. Although I can't necessarily do the bushwalking at the moment. I can do everything else, so.

Elizabeth Diacos  29:37  
That sounds like a very rich full life.

Hunter Leonard  29:41  
Yes, yeah. You got to fill it up with stuff you love. Otherwise, you leave space for things you don't.

Elizabeth Diacos  29:47  
Fair enough. All right, so you're a guitarist. So you must have a favorite song. Can you tell us about that? 

Hunter Leonard  29:54  
Yeah. That was a good question, actually, that you sent me was I feel like, why not, but being a guitarist and playing what, I have lots of songs that I love. But I thought I'd give you a quirky one. And that's a song from The Jungle Book, which was my first favorite song as a 4-year-old. And it's called Bare Necessities which is, which is sung by the bear with the man-cub in Jungle Book. So Bare Necessities is one of my favorite songs to play on the guitar and also to just to listen to.

Elizabeth Diacos  29:58  
Ah, okay, I well remember that song. And so is there - what was it? Is it the tune? Or the lyrics? Like what was it about that, that really resonated for you?

Hunter Leonard  30:35  
I think I really like about it, and as a kid, it was obviously the lyrics and a bear, you know, running around because my nickname was, it was Yogi, because I had this furry jumper that my mother had made for me. So I wore it everywhere. So I've got this nickname of Yogi. But I love that music and the the rhythm when I was a kid, then as I listened to that song, I think, well, it's just really just about the simple things in life, which is kind of cool. You know, you can get by on some pretty simple things and being in lockdown it kind of reminds you of the fact that it's a simple things that count, you know, having some good food, having your family. Having a bit of exercise when you can. The rest of it is, you know, you run your business to achieve that, you don't run your life to sort of run your business economics. 

Elizabeth Diacos  31:23  
Yeah, yeah. I love it. Aw, thank you so much, Hunter for coming on the Get Out of Teaching Podcast today. It's been absolute pleasure talking to you. 

Hunter Leonard  31:33  
Oh, you're most welcome Elizabeth, I'm very happy to help. 

Elizabeth Diacos  31:37  
If this is the kind of conversation you'd like to have, here's some ways we can make that happen. You can connect with me via my website, larksong.com.au or join the Get Out of Teaching Facebook group, or send me a message. You don't need to stay stuck in a job that makes you miserable. I offer a free 10 minute triage call to people who are ready to explore possibilities for the future. So let's have a chat. You've been listening to the get out of teaching podcast. Please share it with your teacher buddies and for shownotes and other resources visit larksong.com.au/podcast

Transcribed by https://otter.ai